Head chef and three other staff walk out on Munier
Blow for MasterChef judge’s new restaurant
‘You can write what you want’
A HEAD chef and at least three other kitchen staff have quit MasterChef Ireland judge Nick Munier’s new restaurant, the Irish Daily Mail has learned.
They have walked out weeks after the launch of his Avenue restaurant in Dublin city centre’s Temple Bar district.
Head chef Tom Walsh resigned early last week.
He told the Mail that Avenue might be a good place and a great concept but it was suffering from teething issues.
‘It takes a while to get the right people and the right dynamics together,’ he said.
‘I am not going to diss the place in terms of what’s going on in there. It just wasn’t going to work for me. Great concept, great idea, it’s just a matter of finding the right people for what the company wants.’
Mr Walsh added: ‘Nick had a very clear idea and a very clear vision of what he wanted to do and the food was to be back to basics because the restaurant was not just a restaurant, it was meant to be a venue, a place to enjoy yourself, but he said from the start it’s not about the chef and that’s fine with me.
‘You can’t run a kitchen when your hands are tied in so many areas.’
When approached by the Mail, Mr Munier said: ‘What’s this all about?’
When told the Mail wanted to talk to him about alleged staff problems, he replied: ‘What staff problems? There are no staff problems at all.’
He was asked about staff walking out of the restaurant.
Mr Munier said: ‘They left of their own accord and, apart from that, I have no comment.’
When asked about the departure of his head chef, he replied: ‘He left on his own accord. There is no story. You can write what you want.’
The MasterChef Ireland judge’s project follows on from the end of his association with his first restaurant, Pichet, and that city centre venue’s co-owner, his wife Denise McBrien. Their marriage is now over.
In December last year, he dropped a legal action relating to the upmarket Dublin bistro. His barrister told the High Court that the company which owns the restaurant had agreed to comply with a settlement that had been agreed but not completed. Mr Munier had claimed he was the victim of a ‘stunt’ to prevent him breaking away from the restaurant, the court heard.
The MasterChef Ireland co-presenter has described his new restaurant as ‘a venue with a difference’.
The three-storey Avenue building, which once housed Robbie Fox’s illfated creole restaurant, Tante Zoe’s, could make or break the one-time maître d’ of Marco Pierre White.
But Mr Munier has always been philosophical, telling the Mail in a recent interview: ‘It is going to be a huge project.’
When Munier launched Pichet in 2009 it was on the back of a flurry of publicity. The gimmick was Nick’s Bistro, a popular TV3 documentary that followed Mr Munier and head chef Stephen Gibson, in the weeks before opening night. The show proved a success. Pichet thrived as the food and the ambience carried them through the recession.
While Munier has said he is upbeat about the future, he has admitted that leaving Pichet was a long, arduous process.
Mr Munier has said he wants people to come to him for a night out at his new place rather than to see a celebrity cook.
‘I am creating a brand first, an aspirational night out, rather than focusing on the food first, which I did previously,’ he said.
‘When I opened Pichet, I had a great chef so I knew that Steve would do his magic in the kitchen and I would take care of front- of-house.
‘But Avenue is about being a big brand where you don’t care who is cooking in the kitchen, you just want a great night out, in a comfortable chair, with great music and fantastic staff.’
And of his head chef, he said in February this year: ‘I have a main chef, whom I was blessed to get, Tom Walsh – and he gets it.
‘I met so many people who wanted to be the head chef with their name on the door.
‘But I didn’t want to be held to ransom by a chef who is going to come in for six months, make a name for himself and move on.
‘So I created this crew that was focused on the whole restaurant, who understood the brand, and I am the face of the brand.’